Herbal Treatment Holds Dangers
The herb sounds innocent enough - pennyroyal - and for many, its reputation as a “natural” abortion method makes it a more appealing alternative to an operation at a clinic.
But doctors and herbalists alike say they are concerned about the increased interest in the potentially toxic pennyroyal, which is widely available at health food stores and herb shops in a leaf or concentrated oil form.
“Pennyroyal oil has a long folk history as an abortifacient (an abortion-causing substance),” said Dr. Lise Alschuler, a naturopathic physician and chairwoman of otanical medicine at Bastyr University.
“It isn’t really. In most cases, it fails to induce abortion,” Alschuler said. “What women are doing in these cases is creating such high toxicity that their own body is unable to sustain the pregnancy. … If pennyroyal oil is to work as an abortifacient, it’s going to work because it’s poisoning the mother.”
Dr. Sandra Sultan, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Group Health’s Eastside Hospital, treated a woman who said she drank pennyroyal tea three times a day for a week to end a six-week pregnancy.
“Within hours after I first saw her, she was bleeding from every orifice,” Sultan said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The 25-year-old woman, who wished to remain anonymous, bled profusely, then went into kidney and liver failure and was in a coma for weeks.
The trend towards using pennyroyal could stem from an increasing interest in natural and herbal therapies in general, said Dr. Sidney Nelson, dean of the University of Washington School of Pharmacy.
Other herbs such as blue cohosh, black cohosh, tansy and even high doses of parsley are considered as possible abortion-inducing remedies, said Jamilyn Daniels, coordinator and telephone counselor for CARE Northwest, a pregnancy and birth defects information service at the UW.
Education, say those who sell herbs, is key in using natural remedies.
The highly toxic pennyroyal oil, used mostly as a pesticide, can kill if less than a teaspoon is ingested, said Eric Pollard, an herbalist and co-owner of Tenzing Momo, a Tibetan herbal apothecary shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.
“When we sell the pennyroyal oil, we make it very clear that this is not for internal use,” said Pollard, who also stamps a warning on the package.
“Pennyroyal poisoning continues to occur regularly,” Nelson and his colleagues reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “Its wide commercial availability and reputation (as an abortion-inducing herb) continue to make pennyroyal a serious public health concern.”